It is fair to say that interest in medieval Iceland has been firmly focused on the High Middle Ages—from the settlement of the country in the late ninth century to the late thirteenth. By comparison, the following centuries are effectively dark ages that have been considered as times of stagnation or even decline, or simply post-interesting. The reasons for this are clear: medieval Iceland has been studied primarily because of its extraordinary literary productivity—the poetry, sagas, and scholarship generated from the twelfth century onward—and because of the unusual constitutional arrangements that prevailed in the country between 930 and 1262. Traditionally, the thirteenth century has been considered the golden age of saga writing and it has seemed that the literary and scholarly creativity was an aspect of the political transition that culminated in the union with Norway in 1262. In fact, much of the literary and scholarly output occurred after the union with Norway, in the fourteenth century or even later. Those texts that may have been originally composed in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries often survive only in fourteenth-century or later versions and it has long been apparent that in order to appreciate these texts, their creation and transmission, it is necessary to understand the cultural milieu that authored, edited, and selected them for transcription. This is not a controversial view but progress has been slow in mapping the contours of the post-1262 intellectual landscape; recently, however, there have been some major contributions, including Agnes Arnórsdóttir’s Property and Virginity: The Christianization of Marriage in Medieval Iceland 1200-1600 (2010) and Elizabeth Rowe’s The Development of Flateyjarbók: Iceland and the Norwegian Dynastic Crisis of 1389 (2005), that are starting to shift perceptions. Erika Sigurdson’s The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland is a very welcome addition to this trend, not least because it has an explicit focus on the church—the institution that fostered much of the intellectual achievement of medieval Iceland.

Sigurdson’s book, which is based on her PhD thesis, provides a general introduction to the sources of Icelandic fourteenth-century history, outlines its main themes, and describes the organization and principal characteristics of the Icelandic church in this period. Almost half the book is devoted to this overview but the rest focuses on clerical identity, particularly as expressed through the writings of Einarr Hafliðason (d. 1393), one of the best-known intellectuals of the fourteenth century. Sigurdson stresses the importance of the church acquiring control over major ecclesiastical estates in the late thirteenth century. These benefices supported a small group of elite clerics and provided the framework for an internal dynamic of church politics. Sigurdson points out the significance of other offices, particularly those of the officialis and the ráðsmaðr (steward) at each of the two episcopal sees, as positions of influence that the elite clerics could aspire to. Her most significant point is about the fusion between the Norwegian and Icelandic church establishments in the fourteenth century. She describes how young Icelandic clerics traveled to Norway and found appointments, providing them with experience and the patronage of Norwegian bishops, which would stand them in good stead when they returned to Iceland aiming to secure a prestigious office. From the second quarter of the fourteenth century most bishops of the Icelandic sees were Norwegian and it is clear that there were complex and interwoven patronage networks connecting the two countries. This speaks against the traditional conception of Icelandic society as quite insular and separate from the rest of the kingdom.

Many questions remain unanswered about these clerical patronage networks: e.g., their relationship with the secular elite, the degree to which there developed ecclesiastical dynasties, if the church offered opportunities of advancement for talented commoners, and the extent to which the Icelandic case is typical of provincial churches in other parts of Europe. Compared to the thirteenth century, the sources for Icelandic history in the fourteenth may seem dull, but they are rich and can be tapped to illustrate general European patterns. Sigurdson has shone light on a fertile field.